Ninth Session of UN-GGIM: Americas

The Ninth Session of the United Nations Regional Committee for Global Geospatial Information Management for the Americas (UN-GGIM: Americas) was held in Santiago, at ECLAC headquarters, from November 28 to 30, 2022. The meeting was organized between UN-GGIM: Americas and ECLAC, which fulfills the role of Technical Secretariat.

The objective of this meeting was to share progress and project future actions of the work agenda of this regional committee, focused on strengthening national geospatial information management processes; support the integration of statistical and geospatial information; and promote the use of geospatial information to support disaster response. Likewise, to examine opportunities for collaboration between countries and also from other geospatial organizations in the region that will participate in the event.

This committee is part of the regional architecture of the United Nations global body on this matter (UN-GGIM), which reports to ECOSOC and has a rich work agenda focused on strengthening the use of geospatial information to support decision-making and public policies, with special attention to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. UN-GGIM: Americas was created in 2013 with the objective of strengthening national geospatial information management processes in the countries of the region, based on the implementation of the guidelines generated by the UN-GGIM Committee of Experts at the global level. The presidency for the period 2021-2025 falls on Chile through the National System for Coordination of Territorial Information (SNIT) of the Ministry of National Assets of Chile, the agency that leads the development of the national geospatial data infrastructure (IDE-Chile).

This was the first time that this regional meeting is held at ECLAC premises, with the participation of delegations from 22 countries, composed of the directors of national geospatial agencies and other expert organizations in the field.